Family

*Sorry, this is a long, pictureless post! We had to get a new computer and I have none of my pictures put on this one! But, its a funny story, so hang in there and laugh at me!*

Happy Family Day all! Around here, James had to work, so the little boys and I hung out around the house and took it easy. With it being family day, I thought I'd let you in on the story of how our family started. In other words, how James and I met. (I'm totally stealing this idea from Rhonda, but her story was so great I thought why not!)

I had just started going to the student ward after going through my divorce and moving back home. Lets just say, I was in NO mood to deal with any serious relationships, but my bishop counselled me to go to the student ward instead of the family ward. My roommate and I ended up becoming friends with a few guys who were also roommates. When we first started hanging out and they found out that I was working at the Maple Leaf Pork slaughter house on the kill floor, they told me one of their other roommates lived there. I'd never seen him around their house or at church with them, so I had no idea what he looked like, but they told me his name was Gilbert. We all had hard hats with our names on them at work and no one that I saw had the name Gilbert on their hard hat. However, its a big plant, so I figurered we just were in different departments.

Meanwhile, there was a guy at work with the name James on his hard hat. I avoided him like the plague! Ever time I saw him, he was covered in pig blood, swinging his knives around and swearing worse than a sailor! (Let's just say James was less than active at this time in his life!)

A few months passed and I went to a house part with my roommate. I was pretty shocked to see James from work there! He was sitting on the floor, looking like he was either drunk or hung over and had a fresh tattoo on his let. I was even more shocked when he recognized me! I kept our conversation as short as politely possible (he was scary!) and then left!

A week or two later, it was General Conference. My roommate and I were going over to the boys house to watch the Sunday morning session. Over the past couple months, I'd started liking one of the boys in the house and we'd been doing some pretty serious flirting. I have to admit I had slightly less than pure motives to watch conference at his house! While we were in the middle of the session, in walks a very hungover scary James from work! The boy I was snuggling with says, "This is my roommate, Gilbert, who I was telling you works where you do!" Turns out Gilbert and scary James were the same guy!

After that, we started hanging out. Things kind of fizzled with James' roommate, but James still wasn't the kind of guy I wanted to date. Fun to hang around as a friend, but that was it! Slowly, we started doing everything together. At first, there was always a big group of us, but then it started to be just us. After about a year, I was pretty into James, but he didn't think it was a smart idea. He'd come back to the church, but didn't think he was worthy of dating. He was SUPER resistant! So, I didn't push. We still kept doing everything together and everyone thought we were dating. On July 1st, he came with me to my Grandma's birthday lunch, but I was very careful to introduce him as my FRIEND. A week or so later, he told me we needed to talk. He drove out to a field in the middle of nowhere with the music blaring. (James doesn't handle serious discussions well at all!) For the longest time he sat there babbling about nothing and I thought for sure he was going to kill me and leave my lifeless body in the middle of nowhere! (Not seriously, but the thought did cross my mind!) Finally, he just blurts out, "I guess you can tell people we're dating, if you want to." With that, he jammed the car into drive and sped away. He didn't say a word the whole way back to town or when he dropped me off! Talk about romance! ;)

A month or so later, we went to a Bulls baseball game. James is an ump, so ball games had become a big part of my life. When we got there, he said he'd be right back, which was the norm, so I went to get a seat in the bleachers. It wasn't a super busy game, so I was sitting in the middle of a huge open space. Throughout the whole game, he kept walking in front of the seats, but never looked at me. I was wearing a bright shirt and waving, but he totally ignored me! I was SO ticked! Baseball was not my favorite thing, but he had talked me into going to yet another game and then he ignores me the whole time! When we left the diamond, I was cranky and so was he, although I had no idea why! We went to East Side Marios to get some food and he went to talk to a friend of his who was working at the bar, leaving me yet again! I was getting less and less impressed. As we were finishing eating, these two guys from the bar came by and said "We're not leaving till you do it." I had no clue what they were talking about, but they kept saying, "Come on, we've been waiting all night and we've got to go." I just assumed they were seriously drunk, but they weren't leaving. Finally James said fine, got out of the booth, got down on one knee and pulled out a ring! I was shocked, but managed to squeak out a yes! Apparently he had a huge thing planned at the ball diamonds, but he couldn`t see me anywhere! Oh well, it all worked out in the end!

I love him beyond words and love the little boys we share! I've loved (mostly) the past five years and look forward to so many more!